BEIJING WAGES A RISKY CORRUPTION WAR

Michael A. Lev, Tribune CorrespondentCHICAGO TRIBUNE

China's government, not known for acknowledging its shortcomings, is pursuing an aggressive anti-corruption campaign that has put officials from the humblest village to the halls of the Politburo on notice that they are being watched.

One member of the Communist Party leadership has been sentenced to death for bribery. All party officials in recent days have been informed they will face audits as soon as they leave government service.

To drive home its pursuit of graft, the party has glorified a new Hollywood-style movie about a clean mayor's struggle against vice. The film, "To Live or Die," is required viewing for all party leaders.

Propaganda campaigns are nothing new in China, but the intensity of the government's anti-corruption push, together with the implicit acknowledgement that the Communist Party is coping with a morality crisis, is calling attention to a question never explicitly addressed: Is there something wrong with China's system of government to explain all this cheating?

Technically, there is no debate. While Westerners would argue that one-party rule is inherently corrupt because the system has no checks and balances, Communist leaders, who brook no dissent, say the system is fine: People just need to be reminded of some of the finer points. Hence, the anti-corruption campaign.

Under the surface, the government's admission that it is having trouble keeping cadres in line has opened the door to critical thinking and writing that once would have been branded as counter-revolutionary.

"Why are so many officials in China and other developing countries so corrupt?" asked a commentary in Southern Weekend, a newspaper run by the local Communist Party in Guangzhou province.

The article said part of the problem is low salaries for government officials, but it also said with a daring tone that personal ambitions are stifled in China and the country needs to speed economic reforms so high achievers "will see that the way to make big bucks is not to be a corrupt official but to be a businessperson."

China is in the midst of a transition from dogmatic communism to "free-market socialism" with limited personal freedoms; it is impossible to say with certainty what forces the anti-corruption campaign might unleash. But it seems safe to say that while China remains authoritarian, it is showing more willingness to accept criticism.

The pressure to reform comes from many sources, including China's need to be accepted by the world community as it opens its economy, and the recognition that the Chinese people are more aware of the democratic rights other Asian countries have adopted.

China's progress is subtle. This is still a state that arrests people for voicing their views. But the change is noticeable.

A new exhibit at the Chinese People's Revolutionary Military Museum chronicles in meticulous detail the pervasiveness of corruption and sleaze in China.

It takes more than an hour for museum-goers to wend their way past all the cases of fallen embezzlers, electricity thieves and party officials on the take--an extraordinary admission from a government hardly known for candor.

Several people who saw the anti-corruption exhibition left with the feeling that they had been snowed. They were more skeptical than heartened by the government's proud tales of big cases cracked, and they were willing to be quoted on it.

"They caught some people, but not enough," said Zhang Ke Fang, 62, a retired nuclear engineer. "The problem comes from the upper level. The lower-level cadres follow the upper level."

"The basic problem is with the system," said Peng Ling, 40, a publishing company executive. "I don't think the leadership is so good at running things."

One of the most direct criticisms of China's corruption was published in Southern Weekend in April and redistributed in another Communist Party publication. The writer, a former government official, made the same point as China's democratic critics: China will never solve the problem of corruption until it introduces a system of checks and balances with independent oversight.

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely," said Ren Zhongyi, a former member of the party's central committee. "The Communist Party is no exception to that rule. The Communist Party supervising itself is like having the left hand supervise the right hand. That just won't do. The party needs to be supervised not just by the party but by the people, the democratic party groups and by independent persons. Not only must it be subject to the supervision of society and public opinion, it must be constrained by law as well."

Ren doesn't suggest what China should do. He says only that "a very difficult problem of political reform in China is how to establish a system that will effectively supervise and constrain the Communist Party."

Analysts say the Chinese government created the anti-corruption campaign because it recognized that corruption undermines its authority. In a poll of academics and researchers conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and two other groups, corruption was identified as the most serious social problem facing China, and one of the major constraints on China's economic and social development.

This week, in another step to address the problems, the government said it will audit all government and Communist Party officials when they leave office, calling it "a new iron fist" against corruption.

Some of the cases the government has pursued have brought that point home. This month, Cheng Kejie, a former vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, was convicted and sentenced to death for accepting $5 million in bribes. If the sentence is carried out, he would be the highest-ranking official executed for corruption since the communists took power in 1949.

Cheng, who had planned to run off with his mistress, is a star attraction at the museum exhibition. He is shown handcuffed in a photograph from his trial last month.

Party officials argue that the exhibition and convictions against corrupt officials such as Cheng are evidence that the system works.

"The purpose of this exhibition is to show the achievements of attacking economic crimes ... provide legal education for the people and show the legal guarantees for reform," said its chief organizer, Duan Guiqing, during a preview for reporters.

Liang Xiao Sheng, a novelist and social critic who has written about corruption issues, is not so sure. And he's not afraid to say why.

"If you talk to intellectuals, even government officials, or taxi drivers, they will tell you that the real problem is the Chinese political system," he said. "For the time being we can't change the political system or talk of democratic elections of cadres. All you can do is give China time."